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Even the city dwellers of the Northwest live close to the land, their concerns and dreams shaped by their environment. Other Americans worry about urban blight, street crime, racial trouble, chronic unemployment. But not the Northwest. Its economy, based on the renewable resources of forests and farms, is expanding strongly. Its biggest manufacturer, Boeing, has a $5 billion backlog of orders. Its two major cities—Seattle (pop. 496,000) and Portland (377,000)—are bustling, clean and eminently livable. There are too few blacks for any real racial problems, and the small Indian minority—.8% of the population—is fighting in the courts, not the streets, for such goals as regaining water rights and tribal lands. In the Northwest, the issues that raise tempers and rile voters involve keeping the water clean to help the salmon and steelhead runs, keeping the air so clear that it smells pine-fresh, and keeping the majestic vistas of uncut forests that in so many places stretch to the skyline.
The whole Northwest, and most especially Washington, is entering a crucial phase, one that will decide whether the region can retain the very elements that distinguish it, in substance and flavor, if not literally in every forest and windswept stretch of coastline. Dixy Lee Ray, herself an increasing source of controversy, is right in the middle of the struggle and delighted to be there. With the subtlety of a Seattle stevedore, she is bulldozing ahead on the key issues. Among them:
Nuclear Power. Can the Northwest use the atom to generate electricity without endangering the environment and the people? Yes, says Ray emphatically. Oil. Should supertankers be allowed to carry oil from Alaska through Puget Sound, the Northwest's inland sea? Yes again, argues Ray.
Federal Control. How much should the other Washington, the one on the Potomac, dictate to the Northwest about how it can use its resources? Very little, says Governor Ray, again emphatically.
Neither Ray nor anyone else can solve another problem: population growth. Looking anxiously ahead, Tom McCall, then Governor of Oregon, declared in 1971: "Please come and visit us again and again. But for heaven's sake, don't come and live here." Surprisingly, the migration to the Northwest is still a trickle compared with the tide flowing to the Sunbelt, but more and more Americans, lured by the natural beauty and the way of life it fosters, are arriving. The populations of Washington, Oregon and Idaho have increased 15% during the past ten years (Florida rose 45%) and are expected to grow another 13% by 1985. More people mean a need for more jobs. Washington Congressman Mike McCormack sums up the development-v.-conservation dilemma: "One man's conservation is all too frequently another man's unemployment."